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Hi and thanks for the recent messages- it seems the good old British weather was stunning for the Bank Holiday weekend!! I'm at Karongwe the second reserve and am taking the opportunity whilst on Base duty to update this. Most of my chores are done except dinner later for about 20 plus people!- luckily it's a brai so minimal effort by me hopefully. I've now been on the reserve properly for a week and it's been quite action packed. It's very different here from Venetia as not only is is quarter of the size there are 9 lodges and so various game drives going on and you often bump into other vehicles. Also the number of collared animals is smaller than at Venetia. After a few days of settling in I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I'm sure you'll be very impressed that I had a python wrapped around my neck and a tarantula (golden boaboon spider) on my hand- and I'm not very keen on either spiders or snakes. That was at a nearby reptile park where I also saw black mambas eating live mice- a very grim experience.
On Karongwe the animals we mainly focus on are cheetahs, lions, leopards and eles. The day consists of 5.30 am starts for a morning drive which usually lasts until 10 am. Then it's a bit of a chill out until the evening drive at 3 pm. We still do the telemetry and collect data but it is a lot easier here. So far we have had some amazing experiences. The lion Maggie has three gorgeous cubs who are now about 11 weeks old and they are very very cute. One of the cheetahs has got two surviving cubs who are really impish and love playing and chasing jackals. The other morning we had stopped as we were recording the location of zebra during our prey count when suddenly a herd of impala took off followed by Nyelethi a cheetah. The cheetah got a kill (although we didn't see the take down) and tehn we followed up to see her and the cubs on the kill. We've also seen a leopard with a kill up a tree- the leopard with attitude- more about that in a mo. In addition there have been some unusual sightings of ardvark, pangolin, civets and honey badgers.
Probably the most unusual thing to happen was the leopard needed urgent dental work due to broken teeth and an absess so we were fortunate enough to be at the vets for the 4 hour plus surgery whilst it had its canines removed. I actially got to stroke a leopard and hold its tail- but I couldn't stick around for all the surgery as it was rather bloody and grim. The leopard was brought back to the reserve and put in the boma but escaped after a couple of days. Then he slipped his tracking collar. He's now back in the boma but probably not for much longer.
The group here is fine although a very much younger mix than at Venetia- and lots of young Americans. 3 more weeks here then off to Capetown for a week. That's just a quick update for now as got chores to do. Hope everybody is getting on okay...oh yes work??- what's that?? :-)
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